It’s nice that the Critical Role cast is getting in touch with their heritage for season 2. Ashley is playing a character inspired by a Northern European aesthetic, Liam is leaning into his German roots. And Taliesin is playing a devil.
some new dumbass: done with crit role bc the dm is too pussy to kill the player characters
me, remembering that time in campaign 1 where a character’s long-time nemesis walked over to his unconscious body and headshotted him, killing him instantly, leading to a complicated ritual where the character’s soul had to be rescued from a demon, and the player said if one wrong word was spoken during the ritual his character would refuse to return:
sam and travis are responsible for the two actions that capture the true spirit of d&d – spending hundreds of gold on spice thinking it’s fantasy cocaine, and taking the dm so literally that you straight up fucking deep throat your sword.
A thought hit me late last night that The Adventure Zone and Critical Role make for really good examples of linear vs. open stories in dnd. Both are really well crafted shows that handle their stories insanely well, but are both structured pretty differently.
Matt Mercer generally lets his players find the story that they want to follow, and then continues to build for that story hook while still weaving an overall arc to make sure all of their free-range shenanigans make sense in the world. He still has tricks up his sleeves and can push them in the general direction, but he tends to work more around what his players do.
Griffin on the other hand knows what he wants to be happening for any given arc and puts the players into a new piece of the continuing story that they then have to figure out how to deal with. He paces out the story beats roughly how he wants to, then lets the players come into his playground and just lets them go.
it’s pretty interesting, but also a cool difference and good reference to note for new dms who are unsure what kind of story they’ll want to work with!
it’s also worth remembering that critical role is an “actual play” show, while TAZ is edited. That makes a HUGE difference with pacing and tone.
Pass Through Fire 